Politics - News Analysis

Watch Jen Psaki Leave Peter Doocy Speechless When She Turns the Tables with Her Own Question to Him

As a general rule, spokespeople do not ask reporters questions. Press briefings are not debates, the spokesperson is there to facilitate getting the administration’s facts and message out to the American people. The problem is that press briefings can begin to look like debates when a reporter’s goal isn’t so much to get an answer as it is to get a soundbite, something that will play on Hannity, for example. At that point, the spokesperson’s job is less about giving out information and more about sending a message.

Jen Psaki is very good at sending messages and one would think that Peter Doocy would be getting better at recognizing when he’s about to be put on the receiving end because he’s been down this road so many times.

In yesterday’s briefing, Doocy really wanted to highlight the fact that four of the top Taliban cabinet members are wanted by the FBI. Peter wanted Jen to admit that talking to them as a government legitimizes them. Fox hosts could use Jen’s answer to say, “See? Now they’re bargaining with these animals!”

Quite obviously, the Biden administration would rather talk to just about anyone else, but no one else is in control of Afghanistan, the Taliban control the country. It is just as obvious that the U.S. has to do all it can to help citizens with dual citizenship who want to get out, out. There’s only one way to get there from here, talk to the Taliban.

Jen ended up having to send Doocy a “message” that she wasn’t going to let him push her into the corner for a soundbite, and she did it by turning the tables on Peter so fast that she left him stranded, struggling to find words that sound like a follow-up. She simply asked Peter whether he was suggesting that we leave the Americans left in Afghanistan stranded.

Yeah. That one left a mark.

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meet the author

Jason Miciak is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is originally from Canada but grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He now enjoys life as a single dad raising a ridiculously-loved young girl on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He is very much the dreamy mystic, a day without learning is a day not lived. He is passionate about his flower pots and studies philosophical science, religion, and non-mathematical principles of theoretical physics. Dogs, pizza, and love are proof that God exists. "Above all else, love one another."

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